Most people would agree that strikes by unionized workers that create an immediate danger to public health or safety should not be permitted. This is why most jurisdictions in Canada have labelled police and fire protection as an “essential service.”

In other situations, such as the current job action by Vancouver civic workers, a prolonged strike would threaten public health as garbage piles up around the city. At some point, legislation may be required to terminate such strikes. The reality, however, is that most public sector employees don’t provide essential services in the sense that our health or safety would be threatened if their services were temporarily withdrawn. The question is, Should these “non-essential” public sector workers have the same right to strike as unionized workers in the private sector?

The answer lies in some important differences between public and private sectors.

Most services provided through the public sector are monopolies: think health care, education, public transit, etc. When public sector workers walk off the job, a substantial part of the community is inconvenienced because there are no close substitutes for most of these services. But when unionized workers in the private sector go on strike, consumers simply switch to the competition.

The existence of substitute products and services in the private marketplace provides incentives for both the union and the employer to be reasonable in their demands. Unions balance the demands for wage and benefit increases against the possibility of destabilizing the company and ultimately reducing employment. Employers balance the effects of losing profits and market share from a prolonged dispute against demands for wage and benefit increases. In other words, there is sufficient market pressures on both the employer and the union to solve disputes on terms both can live with.

In the public sector, unions can make demands knowing there will not be an immediate economic consequence. The trade-off between increased compensation and reduced employment is less important than it is in the private marketplace. In many cases, rather than increase taxes or reduce employment to pay for wage increases, governments cut spending on other services.

Similarly, governments face no financial loss during a work stoppage as tax revenues are still collected. However, when strikes occur in the public sector there is immediate pressure put on governments by the public to end the strike. Because the political costs of prolonged work stoppages can be substantial for politicians, they may too readily accept employee demands. By capitalizing on these political costs, unions often receive increases in wages and benefits that exceed equivalents in the private marketplace.

For these reasons, the public must be protected from the monopoly provision of government services. To ensure uninterrupted services, public sector workers should be prohibited from striking. To protect public sector workers from being taken advantage of by the government, their wages and benefits should be linked to their private sector equivalents through wage boards. Wage boards are independent governmental bodies responsible for collecting, analyzing and setting wages in the public sector on the basis of wages and benefits in the private sector.

In the public interest, a clear choice must be made: we either allow competition and the right to strike or continue to provide services in a monopolized manner and restrict the ability to strike.